Synopsis of “One Minute manager meets the monkey”

Dear Friends Colleagues and Business Associates….when I was thinking about writing blog thought came to my mind that what are the things that interests people ? answer to that question people are interested in learning new ways methods and facts that can be interesting & useful to them and one of the best ways to do the same is to read books… hence for this week on wards I will be sharing my review about a book once every 2 weeks . It will be a pure book synopsis no sermons no sharing of gyan . I am sure you will like the same. This week I share with you a book synopsis on “One minute manager meets the monkey.” by By Kenneth Blanchard William Oncken Jr & Hal Burrows

This book is a story of an individual contributor who gets promoted as a manager / to a management position where there are people reporting to him and the challenges being faced by him and how he overcomes them with help of a friend called one minute manager.

Story goes about to newly promoted manager who is faced with lots of work which keeps him busy & overworked finding no time for him to ensure departments performance is upto the mark. This is a situation which every new manager faces till he is able to distinguish what is his work and what work needs to be done by his people. Normal paradox faced by first time manager…. he is promoted to new position because he has done good work and produced results….so what his mind perceives is that he has to continue the same old good work to produce good results. This commonly faced syndrome of new managers is partially true…. Truth being …they are promoted because they have done good work and fallacy being that he needs to continue doing same old good work. While the reality is that as a manager, he needs to get same old good work get done from others.

Book now introduces a new concept called “Monkey” where monkey being the next move. Where subordinates, by asking questions, pass on the next move (responsibility of next move) to their new manager creating an overload and they going scot free till new manager decides what the next move needs to be.

Then comes 4 rules of Monkey management…Rule # 1 Boss and subordinate shall not part company until appropriate next moves have been described. Rule # 2 The dialogue between boss and subordinate must not end until the ownership of each monkey is assigned to a person. Rule # 3 The dialogue between boss and staff member shall not end until all the monkeys have been insured. Rule # 4 The dialogue between the boss and staff member shall not end until the monkey has a check-up appointment.

Book also deals with caution for new managers giving him 4 tips on delegation.
Next topic it deals with is how to deal with 4 types of Organisational time…. 1) Subordinate imposed time 2) Boss Imposed Time 3) System Imposed Time 4) Self-Imposed Time. While all other time continue to get attention even under pressure since they have definite fall outs if not attended too but the last one that is neglected the most since it has long term repercussions and no immediate impact.

To summarize this is a must-read book for all the individual contributors who move into management positions for first time along with all the all people who feel the pressure of being overworked as well.